Really had to laugh about this post when I read it earlier today. I'm not at all surprised that nobody else has replied. Breeders don't like to talk about this.

When I first got started in this hobby I was given a book as a gift. Breeding and Keeping Snakes by Dieter Schmidt, not the more commonly known book by Chris Mattison. I can't find my copy but I just looked online at Amazon and they have it. You can even search the book on their site. I found a passage on page 60 where he states that sperm retention of 5 years has been demonstrated.

I read that book cover to cover a couple of times. The information on sperm retention is why my females stay in a project and do not get moved around year to year.



Ever wonder why some hets don't prove out? Imagine if you bred a normal female with a 100% het and she did not produce that year. The next year you breed her with a visual morph. She gives you a clutch and you get what you think are hets. Then sell them as 100% hets and they do not prove out. She retained the sperm from the first breeding to a 100% het. The result is that not all the hatchlings are hets. You think the sire is the visual morph but the sire is the het from the year before. This could happen and does. Maybe even your holdbacks aren't hets. Your holdbacks are raised and bred to another visual morph in the hopes of producing a double homozygous hognose, etc. etc.

I think you get the idea. Good breeding / husbandry is what we all need to practice.

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